High-Skilled Immigration Reform a Major Pillar in Renewed Debate

High-Skilled
Immigration Reform a Major Pillar in Renewed Debate

Less
than a month into the new session of Congress, the effects of the 2012
elections can clearly be seen with the emergence of a campaign-style push by
President Obama for comprehensive immigration reform, as well as a Senate
bipartisan framework for legislation.
Long thought to be an issue that was too divisive and too partisan to
achieve meaningful reform, the narrative that has emerged from last year’s
election is that politicians can no longer avoid the need for comprehensive
immigration reform if they hope to ever get re-elected. The shifting demography of the U.S. that was
so apparent in the voting turnout in November 2012 has led policymakers to
believe that “now is the time to act.”
Central to any reform effort will be the need to change the way to U.S.
attracts and retains high-skilled workers who are so essential to the
semiconductor industry.

President
Obama laid out his plans for comprehensive immigration reform in a speech in
Las Vegas on January 29. Of particular interest to the high-tech industry are
the President’s proposals to:

Award green cards to immigrants who
obtain advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) from
American universities.

Create a new visa category for highly-skilled
immigrants to work in federal science and technology labs on national security
programs after being in the U.S. for two years and passing background checks.

Create “startup visa” for job-creating
entrepreneurs and expand visa opportunities for those who invest in the U.S.

Prior
to the President’s announcement, a “Gang of 8” Senators — Chuck Schumer (D-NY),
John McCain (R-AZ), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Robert Menendez
(D-NJ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — put
forward a blueprint on immigration reform that is the greatest progress to have
been made on the topic since the failed reform effort of 2007. While the legislative details remain to be
negotiated, it is clear that the U.S. Senate plans to deal with the issue of
immigration in the first half of 2013 in a serious and bipartisan manner.

Like
the President, the Senate proposal would award a green card to anyone who
graduated with an advance degree in a STEM field. The Gang of 8 calls for immigration reform to
“[Improve] our Legal Immigration System and [Attract] the World's Best and
Brightest.” The framework goes on to
plead:

“The development of a
rational legal immigration system is essential to ensuring America's future
economic prosperity. Our failure to act is perpetuating a broken system which
sadly discourages the world's best and brightest citizens from coming to the
United States and remaining in our country to contribute to our economy. It
makes no sense to educate the world's future innovators and entrepreneurs only
to ultimately force them to leave our country at the moment they are most able
to contribute to our economy.”

While there is seemingly
wide-spread agreement on the issues of high-skilled immigration reform, the
issue has been contentious in the past.
As recently as November 2012, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) brought a
high-skilled immigration reform bill, H.R. 6429, the STEM jobs bill, to the
floor of the House which would guarantee a foreign born student a green card if
they graduated with a doctorate from an accredited university with a degree in
a STEM field. While the bill passed
245-139, it did so mostly along party lines, and was never taken up by the
Senate.

High-skilled immigration
reform is just one issue that must be discussed in the overall package of
immigration reform along with much more divisive issues such as border
security, pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and employment
verification. SEMI will continue to work
through its public policy team in Washington, D.C. to stress the need for
high-skilled immigration reform as the debate evolves in Capitol.

If you have any
questions regarding this or any other public policy issues, please contact
Jamie Girard, senior director, public policy at 202-289-0440 or at jgirard@semi.org.